Final Days in Burma

After several days relaxing and temple visiting in Bagan, it was time to head back to Yangon for our flight back to Bangkok.  Not excited about the idea of a questionably safe internal flight, and keen to avoid any more overnight busses (especially since the bus would drop us in Yangon at 4 am!), we decided on a day time bus ride through the countryside.

To our surprise, the first-class bus was both very nice and full of Burmese people - obviously not a popular way for tourists to travel but we found it a pretty good, uneventful trip.  In front of us sat a very nice English-speaking Burmese engineer and his school teacher wife who told us about their kids and made sure we didn't get left behind at the stops.  The only painful part was a two and a half hour shouted political speech (in Burmese) that was played at inescapably loud volumes over the bus TV and speakers.  [Note from Chad: the louder passages drowned out the cranked-up podcast I was listening to on earbuds]  Well, and then there was when the 10 pound bag of peanuts fell out of the compartment above us and exploded, leaving peanuts crushed into the carpet and rolling up and down the aisles.  Well, and also the part where the nice engineer didn't care (and seemed annoyed!) when some of his 1 L glass bottles of fish sauce fell out of the same compartment and beaned the 1-year-old peasant baby across the aisle in the head.   Maybe not entirely uneventful.

Our last bus ride of the year!!

We didn't get up to much on our last day in Yangon - there were warnings against tourists visiting certain areas of the city and much was closed because it was a holiday.  Just a few snapshots.

Burmese mail delivery - attach mail to clip to be hauled up to the apartment above.  How they get the right apartment I wasn't able to figure out.

We arrived back at our hotel to find that the partially-torn up sidewalk in front had been entirely torn up.  Not uncommon - Yangon is undergoing a lot of roadwork right now.

All over town people were hanging up this monk poster.  Hopefully they relate a happy and peaceful message!

Just another generator on the street, to help residents deal with the frequent power outages throughout  the city.  

So what did we think of Burma?  In a word: awesome.  The people were friendly, the sights are amazing, and it feels different than anywhere I've ever been.  I had read a lot of other travellers' accounts before we went, and it is easy to see that things are changing very quickly - there are ATMs that foreigners can use, many more people have cell phones, and there are a greater number of newer cars on the road, to name a few. There will certainly be some growing pains as the people, businesses, and government deal with the influx of investment, tourists, and friendly international relations (as an aside, right after we got back to Bangkok, Canada announced that it will open an embassy in Yangon this spring).  And (as discussed in Chad's previous post) the country obviously still has some serious issues.  But overall it was a great experience and I feel so lucky that we got to go when we did, particularly before things get much more Western.  You should go!